Harbour
by PertPeeve
Summary: So many crossovers! People from multiple universes find themselves stranded in an ancient place. Is it Heaven, Hell, or something even stranger? (Will include characters from Avengers, Criminal Minds, Sherlock, Batman, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and many more!)
1. Chapter 1

**So what am I trying to accomplish here? Mostly I just love the idea of strangers thrust into an unfamiliar or dangerous situation, needing to figure out a way to tolerate one another and survive. In this case I'm going to pull from multiple fandoms and see what happens.**

**Main character is Loki, who I'm buddying up with Morgan to start. John Watson will soon make an appearance, and I feel this is the sort of story that should be open to suggestions also (provided I'm familiar with the fandom and know the character well enough to write them). I'll let you guys know if I need specific suggestions-otherwise, feel free to throw out any ideas you think would be fun. I am very much making this up as I go along, so let's get this party started.**

* * *

01. An Unfamiliar Place

It didn't happen with the flashing of lights. It was not the result of magic. He failed to feel that all too familiar nauseating pull as though his insides were—at least in that moment of cross-dimensional space travel—impersonating his outsides. It was nothing dramatic, fantastic, disarming, alarming, or even the least bit unpleasant. It was like waking up from a dream that had lasted for far too long.

But that was hardly a possibility. He hadn't slept in ages. He was open and unguarded in sleep; a target for nightmares, both real and imagined, and his list of enemies had no end.

Unless of course that life he'd been living, if you could call it a life, had in fact been the fantasy all along.

Were it only true...

In any case, there he was, weary eyes slow to open. The light, though it wasn't particularly strong, was enough to force the blinking back of tears. How long had he been rotting in the dark? Long enough. He'd half convinced himself that sunlight had been a myth, long faded into the mists of time. But it was more than just the light that shocked his senses. The smell of soil, plant, beast—he struggled to shift himself, wrists still bound together with a short length of chain. He was at the top of a tree-covered ridge, looking down at an endless expanse of foggy forest. The red-trunked trees were enormously tall, the dark undergrowth thick and undisturbed. He could tell by the feel of the place that it was ancient; perhaps even older than himself. The air was close, the expected noises of insects and birds dampened or non-existent.

This realm was not familiar to him. And that was only one of many perplexing details. For instance, how had he, Loki the disgraced and fallen prince of Asgard, managed to escape the dungeon cell he had called home for the past two-hundred years? Most interesting indeed, as not only had his magic been torn from him, but he had long since given up caring. No, not even after the many years of long visits from Thor, who still professed to care, who took Loki's hateful stares and returned them with words of understanding and acts of kindness. Forgiveness. Sentiment. The past few weeks had been especially taxing. What meager effort Loki had maintained to keep himself alive had ebbed gradually with each passing year. Hatred and rage had turned to hopeless despair. Thor's visits had dissolved into endless sessions of childish pleading.

"_The guards tell me you still have not eaten."_

_Loki stared at the rocky ceiling, not caring when water dripped down to smack his forehead. Thor had been there for an hour already, maybe more. Loki had stopped keeping track of these visitations. It was always the same, and he was so, so tired._

"_Brother, I cannot watch you wither and die. Please, Loki, speak with me. Insult me if you must, I wish only to hear your voice."_

_The green-eyed god of mischief turned his head, his body so stiff from lying prone in the same position for endless days that he was sure he heard his joints creak from the effort. Thor smiled at the response, shifting closer to the bars. He held a bowl of steaming stew in his massive hands, but Loki had forgotten the sensation of hunger in much the same way he'd forgotten everything else. Hatred, joy, awe, fear... even sorrow was lost to him now. He felt nothing._

_Thor opened the heavy prison door just wide enough to set the bowl inside. Did he think that Loki had the strength to escape? He might have laughed at the notion, if he recalled how. Thor waited for a reaction._

"_Please try."_

_Loki managed to roll his eyes. What did the big oaf expect him to do? He hadn't the energy to lift his head. Thor regarded him with that same woeful expression so often exploited in their youth. The idiot could lay it on thicker than a love-scorned maid._

"_Tell me not that you have truly lost all hope. Your sentence will one day end, Loki, I am sure father will see reason. I will speak with him again!"_

_The same words as always. Loki closed his eyes. Thor lingered a while longer, watching the rise and fall of his dishevelled brother's skeleton chest. The black hair was long and matted with filth, the porcelain skin grey with illness. When at last the golden prince pulled himself from the cell, it was with the painful understanding that he may not speak with his brother again in this life._

The possibility struck Loki then, in that strange and unfamiliar forest, that in fact he had passed from one life into the next. This place was not Valhalla, however. No, Loki had no delusions where that was concerned. But it was not Helheim either.

He tried to push himself into a sitting position, but his frail body shuddered with the effort. As the cool forest air entered his lungs in gasps, he felt his breath hitch, overtaken by wet rattling coughs. His chest burned, his head swam, and he saw stars before falling back to the forest floor. How could this be death? He felt just as much agony as he had in his dungeon cell.

Unconsciousness might have taken him, but he couldn't be sure. When he opened his eyes again it was to the sound of shuffling. Something was walking through the underbrush, and he risked movement again in order to investigate. A shadow was moving forward hurriedly, scrambling in what looked to be a mad panic as tree limbs and creeping thickets were smashed and fought to allow for faster progress. Loki felt for the first time in a long time the sensation of life. Anxiety. Fear. He would know in a moment if this place was meant as further torment.

A man emerged. Muscled, dark-skinned, bald, and dressed in casual Midgardian clothing. Utterly uninteresting, except maybe for the way he glanced left and right before daring to investigate the haggard body on the ground. Despite the stranger's unobtrusiveness, Loki still went rigid when the man knelt down and placed a firm hand around his bony shoulder.

"It's okay. Hey, it's all right. Stay with me, okay?" The man continued to check his surroundings in such a frantic way that Loki felt the uneasiness spilling out onto him. "We need to move. Anything broken?"

Loki had no idea what to make of this, so he simply shook his head.

"Good. Hang on."

Before the god of mischief could utter a complaint, he was being hoisted from the ground and over the man's shoulder like he was made of nothing at all. And then they were moving down the hill, skidding through leaves and dislodging rocks and dirt in their haste. Loki's head bobbed against the man's sweaty back, coughs once again wracking his thin frame. Through the spinning of his head he thought he saw some twisted forms crawling in and out of the trees above them.

The bottom of the hill reached, Loki heard the distinct sound of rushing water. He cringed, nauseous from the movement and the blood rushing to his head. A chorus of whooping howls joined the sound of the oncoming river. The fallen prince could only raise his head long enough to receive a face full of gnashing teeth. There was a brief sensation of falling, a splash, and then nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

02. Estimations

Derek Morgan was a reasonable guy. He was neither bound by strict logical thinking nor was he overly superstitious. He could follow a gut feeling with as much conviction as he could the cold hard facts. Honestly, sometimes going with your gut was all a man could do when the facts didn't add up. But when one moment you're wandering in and out of sleep on a long jet ride home from an exhausting case, and the next moment you're in a misty, unfamiliar forest with no sign of a plane crash, your teammates, and not a scratch on your body to speak of, your gut and the facts say 'that's all folks!' and leave you to your fate.

He'd done a quick perimeter check and found no sign of a collision. No debris, no smoke, no fire, and—thank God—no bodies. The forest wasn't familiar. The blood-red trunks and near-black leaves didn't look like anything he'd seen before. Everything was dark and foreboding, but with enough of a light source to make out the occasional sweeping shadow or drifting fog. With the factual side of things taken care of, he attempted to rule out the fantastical; pinching his arm, trying to imagine up a beautiful woman, he even made a quick attempt at flight, failing miserably and thanking his lucky stars nobody was around to see it. Not a dream, then.

After that, Morgan had wandered. What else could he do? The forest sloped endlessly downhill and he wove back and forth through the tight trees making seemingly no progress after what had to be hours of work. Isolation coupled with the suffocating closeness of the forest was starting to get to him, but he fought back the feeling of panic. He couldn't let himself flip out now. There was still a chance his team was out there and needed his help.

After another hour or so, the forest momentarily leveled out. Derek stopped for a breather, turning to glance back the way he'd come and seeing only a wall of trees disappearing up into shadow and mist. He looked ahead, swiping sweat from his brow with a sigh. For the briefest instant he though he saw a break in the distant trees. The clouds moved just enough that something slipped through and glimmered. Maybe a flashlight. Maybe sun reflecting on water. It was enough to spur him on.

Later he wished he'd gone with his gut and listened to that little voice in his head that said making a lot of noise just now was probably a bad idea.

"Hello!?" He shouted over the ridge, his voice falling flat in the thick air. "Is anyone out there? Is anyone hurt! Hello!?"

He stepped back, paused to listen.

No one returned his call. Only a soft clicking in the trees above him. A low growl. Something slipped from a branch and landed in the undergrowth and Derek turned, squinting against the obscuring murk. Nothing happened for a long time.

And then everything happened at once.

Black fur. Wild eyes. Gnarled teeth. Impossibly fast.

"Shit!"

Derek let himself drop from the ridge, rolling on impact and righting himself just in time to trip and roll again. Howling followed him, along with a growing number of footfalls. He could only just keep ahead of it, until the ground finally leveled again and a break in the cloud allowed light to filter down. The forest was suddenly silent, but Morgan wasn't about to take that for granted. He continued racing on ahead, abandoning any attempts at rationalizing what had just happened and focusing now on staying alive.

He pressed on, aggressively shoving and tackling any tree branch that got in his way.

When he stumbled out into a clearing, he almost rushed back again. He'd taken the random body on the ground as another one of those... _things_, whatever they were. But no, this was a man. An injured man, from first look. A dead man, if he looked even harder.

Derek glanced back and forth, half for his pursuers and half for an indication of what had dropped this poor guy into the middle of nowhere—because whatever it had been was apparently making its rounds today.

Seeing neither of these things, he rushed forward, kneeling down and placing a hand on the man's shoulder. He noticed three things straight away. One, the man was alive but severely underweight and ill-looking. Two, he was bound at the wrists with shackles and chain. The third thing would have to be confirmed later, because he really didn't think he had the time.

The man was shaking, eyes wide and skin deathly white.

"It's okay. Hey, it's all right. Stay with me, okay?" Morgan thought he heard a twig snap behind him. Nope, definitely didn't have the time. He had to get the two of them out of there. "We need to move. Anything broken?"

The thin man shook his head.

"Good. Hang on."

Morgan was thankful the guy was so scrawny. It made the final push for escape with a second person on his back a little easier than it might have been. They were being chased again, and he struggled desperately to keep his footing on the steep terrain. He felt his heart race at the sound of water, and when he saw the river come into view he knew there was only one means of possibly getting out of this alive.

He felt something hit him in the back, held his breath, and leapt for the water.

* * *

When Loki woke, it was clearly from a bizarre dream. He felt the hard rock beneath his sore back and heard the echoing drip of water falling from the stalactite ceiling. Back in his dungeon cell, then. He sighed, feeling oddly disappointed, despite the danger he had been facing back in the forest. He'd rarely had dreams so vivid that weren't in some way real, and that one had lacked the usual alien monster posturing and torture and incessant threats on his life.

He shifted, feeling damp and chilled to the bone. As soon as he became aware of this, his body was overcome with convulsive shivering.

"Whoa, hey hey—"

Loki jumped back nearly a foot at the voice, his eyes wide, falling on the hunched figure of the same man from the forest.

"It's okay. We're safe," Derek shuffled over and extended a calming hand. "I found a cave."

"_Obviously!_" Loki rasped. "Step back! Get away from me!"

"All right, fine man, fine," Morgan raised his hands and moved back as Loki curled into himself with another fit of coughing. The profiler watched him silently, making note of the blue tinge to the man's lips, before returning to his attempts at making a fire.

"I was busy running for my life, but you looked like you could use some help."

Loki groaned and unfolded himself, his chains clinking as he rested his chafed wrists against his chest. "I hardly require your trifling aid, _mortal_. Have you any idea _who I am?_"

Derek smiled. "I had a suspicion. And calling me _'mortal'_ just now kind of ruled out any other possibilities. You're Loki. You led the attack on New York. Oh yeah, we've held seminars on your evil ass."

"And what _contempt_ you must harbour toward your own kind to have risked your life to help me."

"No contempt. Just the human thing to do." A flicker of fire erupted from the two sticks Derek had been furiously rubbing together, and he quickly tossed some more kindling at it. "Now we're talking!"

Loki turned his head to watch the flames.

Derek rubbed his hands over the heat. "Come closer, dry yourself off."

"I prefer the cold."

"Do you prefer pneumonia?"

"I'll need a moment to think on that."

Morgan rolled his eyes. "Right. You like the play the martyr. You're also smart enough to know when you're beat. Use the situation to your advantage."

"Ah. Psychology." Loki closed his eyes, concentrating on his breathing. Being a Jotun made him perfectly adapted to the cold, but long years in the damp and dark had whittled away his immunities. Odin had removed his magic—had made him _mortal_. It disgusted him now to be shivering like a sick dog, but the human was right. The dry warmth of the fire was calling to him. He shifted, feeling at once a pain tremble through his bones and a weakness pull him back to the stony floor.

When he felt the stranger's strong hands close around him his reaction was a mix of surprise, fear, and indignity. He flailed wildly against the intrusion of his personal space, making a sound in his throat like some feral animal that startled him even as he did it.

"Calm down!" The hands stayed where they were, and Loki's energy was spent almost as soon as he had summoned it. Derek stared at him, and Loki found with dismay that he couldn't hold the hard gaze. He, who once forced the trembling Midgardians to their knees in fear, reduced to a sniveling wreck by a single human.

Morgan lifted Loki under the arm, attempting to offer the alien some semblance of dignity by allowing him to stay on his feet, but the chains got in the way and Loki's legs were too atrophied to keep him upright. The shambling was short-lived and the god of mischief consented to being carried the rest of the way.

"You're not afraid of me," Loki spoke to the ceiling once he was laid out again.

"Should I be?"

"I'm a god."

Morgan's mouth twitched into a smile. "That's a pretty bad cough for a god."

When the profiler received no response, he continued. "All right. You spent your life falling short of living up to your father's expectations and your brother's inherited greatness. You couldn't compete physically so you perfected your skills in magic. You seek approval and you crave control. What skills you have you use to impress and scare others to prove you're just as powerful and worthy of praise as Thor. You hate to fail or suffer any blow to your dignity because you can't tolerate imperfection. Your magic and your words are a front to hide the fact you still feel inferior. You wouldn't have allowed me to help you if you still had your magic—"

"_Enough!_" Loki's gaze was dangerous.

Morgan was undeterred. "Was mortality your punishment?"

The former god continued to glare, but refused to answer the man's question. Asking how the human had made such an accurate guess would be to acknowledge that he was right in his assumptions.

"I'd thought your people had long ago ceased fabricating stories about the lives of gods."

Derek chuckled, "Hard not to when the gods keep popping down for a visit." He rubbed his hands together, finally feeling the warmth properly returning to him. "I'm Derek, by the way."

Loki closed his eyes. "Am I supposed to care what names a sow gives to its squealing young?"

_Don't indulge him_, Morgan thought. The guy loved to talk and the best way to come out on top was to refuse to give him anything to talk about. From the looks of Loki, he'd been confined somewhere for a very long time. No doubt he'd missed weaving words with which to crush and belittle people.

As expected, Loki could only bear to be ignored for so long.

"What was chasing you?"

Derek looked up from his thoughts with a frown. "I was actually hoping you had some idea."

The Jotun prince decided that admitting his ignorance was favourable to remaining in the dark. He was desperately curious to know how this man had ended up in a forest that he was certain existed nowhere on Midgard.

"I was in a cell this morning. I know not how I arrived on this realm."

"Then we're in the same boat. I was flying home on a jet one minute and standing in this forest the next. Those things started chasing me when I called out for my friends."

Loki furrowed his brows. "I can understand why forces would conspire toward _my_ capture, but why _you?_" The god turned his head to fix Derek with a look of disappointed scrutiny. "You are utterly unremarkable."

"Well this utterly unremarkable mortal saved your skinny ass from a pack of monsters," Derek shifted, stretching out his legs next to the fire and getting himself as comfortable as was possible on the rocky ground. "And unless you've just been saving your energy and can magic yourself back to that cell, you're going to need my help again tomorrow."

Loki grinned. Who was this cocksure little creature?

"You sound as though you have formulated a plan," the god stated, his voice catching on the final word and driving him into another infuriating coughing frenzy.

"Keep heading downhill," Morgan explained. He recalled the distant glimmer witnessed on the ridge. "It feels right."

"I'm to depend on human intuition then? Forgive me if I do not find that reassuring."

Derek got to his feet and again closed the gap between them. He grabbed the god despite a tirade of verbal abuse and dragged him over to a clear pool of fresh water.

"Your biggest mistake was underestimating humans. Drink, you'll feel better."

"Do not _dare_ presume to understand my actions—"

"Take your time. Tell me when you're done, I'll be over by the fire."

Loki watched the man with wide-eyed fury. Had his suffered defeat and long years of isolation and punishment not been enough? Now he was to endure the embarrassment of subjugation by some powerless mortal? Was this Odin's latest insult?

The god of mischief seethed until he was once more taken by coughs. All the concentrated hatred of his many long ages of life decayed and gave way to defeat. He relented and drank the water.


End file.
